The invention relates to a method of making a dental drilling template adapted to the jaw structure of a patient and having at least one guide passage for guiding a drilling tool and positioned in accordance with positional data on an impression element formed with a negative impression of the jaw structure.
Methods of this type are known in the prior art and are used in the field of implant technology. These methods are based primarily on x-raying the jaw of a patient and displaying it virtually as a model by a data-processing system so the position of an implant to be placed in the future and of the guide passage required therefor, along that a hole should be made in the patient's jawbone by a drilling tool in order to introduce an implant into the hole is specified on the basis of the displayed data. In this case the definition of the positional data usually takes place relative to a reference provided on an impression element held by the patient during the radiological recording of the jaw and is also recorded radiologically. Recording and subsequent display of the jaw to be treated can be carried out, for example by digital volume tomography.
Already in the prior art the virtual planning of the guide passage positioning is advantageously carried out in order, on the one hand, to locate an area with sufficient bone structure but also, on the other hand, to ensure that the holes provided for the implant placement do not damage any nerve pathways or other endangered neighboring structures.
Thus this positional data determined during the virtual planning is used to specify where to position a guide passage on an impression element having a negative impression of the patient's jaw structure. Such an impression element with at least one guide passage forms a drilling template in the context of the invention that is placed onto an existing jaw structure of a patient, according to which a dentist can drill a hole through the at least one guide passage.
DE 10 2010 031 018 [US 2013/0144417] discloses, for example, such a method in which a negative impression of the jaw structure including at least one guide passage as a whole is machined out of a blank with the aid of a computer. However, the method known in the prior art requires an elaborate and expensive machining apparatus, in particular a machine capable of creating guide passages, for example, as holes in the blank at any angular orientation. This can essentially only take place through time-consuming manual adjustment procedures on a multiaxis mounting base by experienced specialist staff or by an expensive five-axis machining apparatus.
For these reasons, the creation of such drilling templates that are thus formed substantially from an impression element having a negative impression of the jaw structure and at least one guide passage, can usually be carried out only by specialized machining centers. For the patients concerned, this means that long waiting times must be accepted, because their own dentists do not carry out the production of such drilling templates themselves.